Two Downtowns and Two Malls

Dear Diary,

On Monday I finally got to watch a movie my cousin had worked on, in the way I wanted to watch it.  I didn't find his name in the credits; they went by too fast, so I'll probably have to look on a DVD to say I've seen him listed.  But anyway.

I had some errands to run first.  One of them should've been on Capitol Hill, but ended up taking me downtown, where the others were anyway; the upshot was that I was in Bellevue in the evening instead of the afternoon.  But while I was in downtown Seattle, I found a street fountain I'd found before and forgotten about, which isn't on Seattle Public Utilities' list.

R. [595 Pine St]

I hadn't bought a newspaper - none of my plans for the day involved finding water fountains or restrooms, and although it was a splurge to go to the movie in the first place, I don't splurge quite so thoroughly as to buy something I normally can't afford just because I'm splurging.  I also forgot to take a location shot.  But this water fountain is at the southwest corner of 6th Ave and Pine St, and was running strongly Monday afternoon:

and giving good water.  (I expected trouble at the theatre over satchels, so didn't even bring a bottle, let alone food, for the journey.  Pretty soon I'll tell you, dear Diary, about another water fountain I drank copiously from Monday afternoon.)

On my way from the Bellevue Transit Center to the cinema, I found another street fountain:

a. [10501 NE 6th St, Bellevue]

It was not running strongly, in fact so weakly that I'd pretty much have had to kiss the bowl to drink from it:

For various reasons, I went back to Bellevue on an expiring transfer yesterday, so I was able to take proper shots, running with newspaper, and location, but again I forgot the location shot.

Lincoln Square North

Lincoln Square Cinemas does indeed have a box rule, and I'm pretty sure the satchel I carried exceeded it that day, but the ticketseller let me past.  I enjoyed the movie a great deal.  However, it only started after about twenty minutes of commercials and ten of previews, and it's a really long movie in the first place, and I really had drunk copiously from water fountains in downtown Seattle.

So when I left the theatre, I was thinking two things:  1) it was really unfair for me to generalise about Bellevue street fountains on the basis of one example, and 2) I couldn't do anything about this unfairness until I'd found a restroom.

This resulted in the shocking discovery that there are no public restrooms in Lincoln Square North.  Who ever heard of an indoor mall without restrooms?  I even found a map that showed no restrooms.  However, when I went back yesterday, instead of going all the way up to that map, I settled for one at the entrance, and that does show restrooms - in a different building, Lincoln Square South.

(Look closely at Level 2, dear Diary.)

This presented three possibilities:  i) The lack was unique to this particular mall.  ii) The lack was in common among the malls that present themselves as "The Bellevue Collection".  iii) The lack was normal for Bellevue, perhaps for suburban, malls generally.  Considering that I'd just finished an epic list of libraries for which I fairly often recommended shopping malls as nearby places with restrooms, this last possibility was concerning.

Bellevue Square

Fortunately, the lack of restrooms is in fact just something about that particular mall.  Bellevue Square, across the street from Lincoln Square North and also part of "The Bellevue Collection", has restrooms, and has good signage enabling me to find them.

 

The first photo shows the sign inside the Macy's through which I'd entered, the second in the actual shopping mall space.  The mall's restrooms aren't what I'd think it would supply for its wealthy target market, but aren't by any means bad.

On the other hand, Bellevue Square does take some trouble to hide its food court, which isn't at the center of the first floor as usual, but hidden in a corner of the second.  I'd gotten kind of hungry, and anyway it took no time at all to determine that the only thing I could buy to compensate for using their restroom would be food.  (Normally, I'd just buy a couple of gumballs.  But Bellevue Square has no gum machines, and anyway I had no change.)  Once I finally found the food court, it turned out to include a Great State Burgers location.  I see that chain favourably because of employees who offered me food from there when I slept down the street from a location, and more so after something I'll tell you about soon, dear Diary.  But I'd never eaten their food.  So I decided to extend the splurge far enough to get a cheeseburger.

(It was somewhat discouraging, given my own current search for work, that all three of the Great State employees whom I saw are middle-aged like me.  The two ticketsellers I saw at Lincoln Square Cinemas are at least middle-aged, possibly actually old.  Do businesses in Bellevue hire teenagers for upper management to make up for depriving them of more usual teenage jobs?)

Once I'd eaten (at an outside bench, of course), I started cudgeling Open Street Map, which unlike Google Maps tries to show street fountains.  What I found then on my phone turned out to be all the street fountains Open Street Map actually shows between NE 12th St and the line of SE 4th St, and between 100th Ave NE and I-405.  Here's a map of that area from Open Street Map:

That turns out to be on just a bit too large a scale to show Open Street Map's symbol for a water fountain, which I've finally figured out - it shows a very small tap delivering water into a slightly larger partly-filled cup.  (I'd always thought that cup was a flowerpot, and couldn't figure out what it was doing there.)  Fortunately, Bellevue itself thinks its downtown is somewhat smaller:

and the symbol shows just fine on that scale:

One of those is fountain a above.  Here are the other two:

b. [10840 NE 6th St, Bellevue]

This fountain I remember, sort of in front of the Bellevue Transit Center's visitor's center.  It was of the type in Northacres Park and Cal Anderson Park, where you have to wait for the water because of the freeze-proofing.  I don't remember ever visiting in winter to see whether it was on, though.

Maybe it's still there behind those hoardings, but I'm not betting that way.  In any event, it isn't accessible this year.

c. [375 106th Ave NE, Bellevue]

The fountain at this location is definitely still there and accessible.  It just isn't running:

So where Seattle has, let's see, at least twelve outdoor water fountains downtown outside the parks, Bellevue's rather smaller downtown has at least three. [1]  Fair enough.  But where six of Seattle's were running strongly last week and/or Monday, none of Bellevue's were running strongly yesterday.

That said, Bellevue, like Seattle, does have downtown parks, and one of them has working water fountains.  But this page has already gotten long enough, so I'll tell you, dear Diary, about that park and about my hike home afterward in another page later today.  Happy hours until then.

[1] Bellevue's street fountains are even less documented than Seattle's, which is an impressive achievement on the part of whomever they belong to.  So of course, since Bellevue's downtown is much less familiar to me than Seattle's, it's possible there are more in places I haven't looked.